I am responding to both your posts….
I am happy that I mistook your views on crypto and that your other views are mostly aligned with mine.
Where I have a big problem is when I hear people speak in terms of “a great reset and a great transfer of power”. I know this comes from the same place I feel at times, but I also know that often some who speak like this want a shortcut. Shortcuts in building civil and fair societies don’t exist and lead to irrational and even destructive results and even more often failure. My example of what we all have to do is best found in Stacey Abrams. You know the work is long and hard and even tedious but the results come and they aren’t perverted into something equally bad or worse.
Even more key is spreading the right information. I have lived and worked in France, Germany and Switzerland. I returned to the USA in 1992 when Hillary was trying to create what was effectively a German style healthcare system. The short of it was for me that I saw how bereft most Americans were of knowledge of other countries solutions and success. And not just of healthcare. To this day, I maintain a list of comparatives between the features and economies of the USA and Germany to be able to show people exactly how poorly performing we are on almost any metric (except for super-wealthy people) as a wealthy western democracy.
The point of this is that even most educated Americans have little or no awareness of how many successful “capitalist” liberal democracies are empirical models for us. Many of the features that make this possible we have slowly lost and some we never had, most of all the fight against money and corruption in our election systems. And many we keep trying to get and failing over and over because our nonsense ideology (“freedom”, free speech, greatest country, etc.) is easily exploited by those with interests at stake in the current system.
It is these targets that we have aim at fixing. And we have to emphasize empirical data and comparable analyses as the means of showing people what exists and what is possible.
R/evolution or great resets/transfers of power is indeed what we want and need. But that shouldn’t be our message. It should be “why are we failing on so many metrics of a fair and successful society and what specifically we need to change”.
I have been politically active since I worked for Jimmy Carter’s election and attended his inauguration. I have for many elections (from city council to president) been a canvasser, caller, data analyst, organizer, and most of all a source of information to all and any people I speak to.
But also, understanding how perverted the American mind has become is important. For example, what I call the Bernie Sanders problem. Everything he says, I agree with (except as specifics such as Medicare for all, but not because I’m against universal mandatory healthcare systems). And I would call myself a democratic socialist. But you CANNOT do that in America and expect to make change. We are a shallow people, as implied above. We have to accept that and that most Americans are ignorant and resort to labels and live by shortcuts (get rich, get even, get lucky, etc.).
Instead, you have to use real world empirical examples. For example, you have to say:
“why do Germans, now with 40% of their power renewable, have the most high-performing top quality infrastructure, pay nothing for post-secondary education, have the most unionized workforce in the western world, get 6 weeks of paid vacation as federal law, all paid sick days, paid paternity and maternity leave, means-tested/no out-of-pocket/better healthcare than our gold-plated super-expensive plans, have strict regulations around money and advertising in the elections and at the same time dominate so many sectors… automobiles, factory-automation and industrial robotics, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, power transmission, and have more than 3 times the percentage of their workforce in high-paying manufacturing jobs, etc. And why does Germany — a country the size of Montana and less than ¼ our population and next to no natural resources — export as much as the USA and sometimes more on a dollar basis. Why do they out-export us even to China?”
Empiricism says that something is possible equally if done in the same way. And should be done better if you have more advantages in resources, size, and population. In short, you have to point this out and ask “Why is America such a loser”?
This is the kind of message that brings the benighted American some crack of daylight. Rhetoric around “revolution”, “great resets”, etc. will just close their eyes further and make them dig in with their AK’s and get ready for the proto-fascist power fantasies that so many of them have been fed.
